I swallowed hard as he traced my knuckles with his thumb. “Nothing about this is simple.”
“It hasn’t been. I agree.” Kas nodded. “But it is. I didn’t understand before. But it’s so fucking simple.”
“I don’t...I don’t understand.” Goosebumps ran up my arms as he let my hand go and took another drink.
Lowering the glass from his mouth, he gave me a gentle smile but behind it lurked steel. A rod of iron. A decision forged with mountains and stone. “A choice. Everything I’ve been running from, hiding from, unwilling to face was because I chose not to remember. I chose to let it beat me into something I’m not proud of. It made me hurt you. It made me hurt myself. It will eventually end up killing you, me, and the future I’m fighting so goddamn hard to deserve with you.”
He leaned back, propping his elbow on the armrest and inhaling deep. “It’s taken me a long fucking time—an embarrassingly long time that I’m not proud of—but...I’ve finally made a different choice.” He sucked in a breath, his voice going as cold as Jareth’s. “For all the shit that I did remember, I forgot one fundamental piece.”
Jareth grunted, sounding just as wild as Kas looked. “You forgot who you were...to us.”
Kas shook his head. “I forgot who I was to me.”
“You were more than just our brother, Kas. You were the reason we all didn’t die in here.”
“And you were the reason I did what I did.”
Jareth pressed a fist to his heart. “Whatever you need from me, I’ll give it. If you need death, I will grant it. If you need truth, I will speak it. If you need another punch to the skull to wake you the fuck up and remember who you are, then I’ll beat you until my hands are raw.” He smiled with a reverent threat before pointing a finger at me. “You want to deserve her? Fuck that, you already do. You deserve her a thousand times over.”
I shivered as Kas didn’t speak. He watched Jareth. He breathed, but he didn’t speak.
Jareth threw back the rest of his drink and poured a third. He licked his lips as he settled back, getting comfy as if this was a casual night between friends. “Go on then, Kas. Tell me why I gave you one chance in the forest. Why I would’ve happily killed you if it meant protecting that girl sitting dumbfounded beside you. Tell me why you’re the only fucking person I will ever trust for the rest of my life. Tell her. Tell yourself. And maybe, I can be the savior in this story. I can rescue you this time, just like you rescued me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THAT WAS THE THING about choices.
Most of the time, we made them without even thinking. Sometimes, outside influences made our decisions for us. Other times, we’d allow others the responsibility. But most of the time...it was on us.
And that was a hard fucking pill to swallow.
Because of my decisions, I’d lived in this valley like a thoughtless beast for a decade. I’d allowed a past—a past that should’ve had no power over me—to have all the power in the goddamn world over my dreams, my actions, and my heart.
I let a choice almost kill the girl I’d fallen in love with.
I let a choice cripple me until I was a pathetic, repetitive, poor excuse of a man who ought to be locked in a padded room and fed antidepressants for the rest of his life.
But I no longer wanted that choice.
I no longer wanted to be afraid of falling asleep. I didn’t want to have to chain myself to a bed so Gemma was safe from me. I didn’t want to ever run the risk of waking up and finding her dead because I let my choice to hide become so much bigger than who I’d been.
And who had I been?
Fuck, he would never have become this...this thing.
This constantly afraid, always angry, forever fucked-up thing.
Once upon a time, I’d been the bravest of us all. No matter what mental games Storymaker played with me, I never broke. No matter the physical torture or sexual perversions, I didn’t let it touch me. Jareth was right that my penance for strangling came from my own experiences—yet another thing I’d shoved so deep, deep inside me, I’d all but convinced myself it never happened.
Storymaker never touched me sexually, but he got off on taking me to the brink of death before bringing me back. It didn’t matter where I was in Fables: heading to the bathroom, coming back from a guest, sneaking into the kitchen. If he found me, his fingers would find my throat, and I’d be his to murder, only to wake up to his firm slap a few moments later.
I’d adopted his sickness.
I’d slipped into his habits of control.
And that was yet another punch to the face because I refused to be a monster anymore.
Back then, it wasn’t suppression or amnesia that’d kept me strong—it was the knowledge that I had something to fight for. A goodness that never died inside me.
I was strong and kind and, Christ, how had I forgotten that?
As surely as I’d forgotten Storymaker’s enjoyment of squeezing my throat, I’d forgotten that I never let him break me.
Sure, I’d broken toward the end.
I’d drowned beneath nightmares and could no longer touch my own body, but that was after years of abuse. That was after thousands of hours of putting myself between my family and monsters. That was understandable.
It didn’t make me weak or worthless.
It didn’t mean I had to live the rest of my life hidden and alone.
If I hadn’t done what I did...then the grave outside would’ve held Jareth, me, and our family. It would’ve housed nine slaves instead of the many guests I’d slaughtered.
Only Jareth knew why I’d struck so violently that night. He’d overheard the same conversation I had. We’d been used together—a regular occurrence by that point. Seemed Storymaker deemed we were both the dangerous ones, the ones most likely to shuck conditioning—therefore the ones who needed the most reminding that our actions directly affected the others.
It’d been a game of Mirrors.
Storymaker had come up with it himself. The rules were one guest would touch a slave, and that same abuse would be done to the other slave, only ten times worse. I always begged to be the one receiving the magnification.
Most of the time, Storymaker agreed, sitting beside me while I was whipped, fucked, or burned. His voice constantly in my ear, praising how good I was, how bad I’d been, how much he loved watching me suffer.
That night, though, he’d made Jareth be on the receiving end.
Storymaker beat me with a cane until he split my skin. But Jareth had it worse. For every strike I received, he’d gotten ten. For every thrust from a guest, splitting me in half, he’d endured twenty.
By the time we were released, we half carried each other back to the dorm, stumbling past the library as Storymaker wiped his brow and adjusted his hard-on, muttering to a guest we couldn’t see that he’d grown bored of us.
That it was time for new stock, new slaves.
We were worn out.
It was time for an upgrade.
I’d thought Jareth had forgotten what we’d heard. He’d crashed out cold when we’d fallen into his bed. I hadn’t had the strength to untangle myself from him and ended up passing out in his embrace.
Our blood mingling. Our arms entwined around each other.